Chapter 448: Between Hearth and Hunger
He followed because she asked, because she always knew when to turn the page. In the bathroom, tiles cool beneath their feet, and steam wrote temporary spells on the mirror.
He peeled the tape carefully; she swatted his hands away, tasked at the edge of the wound with a nurse’s disdain and a lover’s gentleness, and cleaned it while the water heated. The salve’s stink made him wrinkle his nose; she laughed and kissed the corner of his mouth to fix it.
"Don’t complain, my little baby."
"Tch..."
"If you behave, you’ll get a reward." The glint in her green eyes pulled at something low in his gut.
Under the shower’s heat, the world shrank to warmth and white noise. Her palms mapped him slowly—shoulders, chest, bruised ribs lingering with a frown he didn’t like. He tipped her chin up with a knuckle, a silent don’t. She moved on.
They washed the night away: the sting, the kitchen musk, the sand he hadn’t realised still clung to him. She slipped between his thighs, and the proud wolf accepted a quiet, wordless defeat.
When they stepped out, she wrapped him in a towel, then turned for him to do the same. His clumsy turban for her hair fell apart instantly; she laughed and let it go.
In the dim bedroom, the city’s glow brushed the curtains. He sank onto the bed, fatigue hitting deep into his joints now that the hunt was over. Leona pushed him back, slid under his arm, her head resting on his shoulder, leg hooked over his thigh, palm flat over the wound as if she could smother the itch.
"You okay?" she asked after a while, voice low, the right kind of quiet.
"Define," he said, the joke small but present.
"Not lusting over another woman so much you masturbate over the kitchen table," she said.